Follow John Billingsley

John Billingsley

Date Of Birth

Biography

Born on May 20, 1960 in Media, Pennsylvania, John Billingsley is an actor best known for his role as Doctor Phlox on the sci-fi series Star Trek: Enterprise. Although born in Pennsylvania, Billingsley grew up in Connecticut. He majored in theater at Bennington College in Vermont before he moved to Seattle, Washington. In Seattle, he was one of the founders of Book-It, a theater company that specializes in stage adaptations and an acting studio called Freehold. He broke into mainstream television during the early 1990s when he started appearing in minor roles in television and film. He is married to actress Bonita Friedericy, and the two have worked on a number of projects together.

As far as television is concerned, Billingsley made a memorable appearance in an episode of The X-Files, where he played a friend of the Lone Gunmen who turned out to be a government spy. Meanwhile, he was also on the short-lived television series The Others, where he played Professor Miles Ballard. Yet it was his role as the quirky alien Doctor Phlox in the fifth Star Trek series Star Trek: Enterprise that earned him mainstream recognition. In fact, he played himself in an episode of Roswell during an episode that taped on the Enterprise set.

Billingsley eventually starred in an independently produced film called Breathing Hard in 2000. In 2002, he guest-starred in an episode of Stargate SG-1, where he played a scientist and Trekkie who worshipped at the altar of Star Trek maker Roddenberry. He also had a major role opposite Denzel Washington in the 2003 film Out of Time. He also had a notable guest appearance on the series Cold Case as the serial killer George Marks. He was whacked on the head with a frying pan in the first season of the HBO series Six Feet Under.

Nickname

Height

Quotes

This is a silly story. I was at a train station on the southbound platform and on the northbound platform there was a big, thuggish looking guy. He had a woman pressed against the wall and he was speaking in a very ferocious manner. I thought he was assaulting her. There were not many people on the platform and nobody else seemed to be doing anything.

I thought, "What am I going to do?" This guy can beat the crap out of me, so I thought I'd act like a lunatic and distract him. I started yelling "Whoo, whoo, whoo!" I was acting like a train. They stopped, looked at me and burst out laughing. So clearly, I misread the situation. So it was both scary and mortifying at the same time.